Well... Mathematica is not a typesetting engine, so it's probably not going to be as good at kerning as $\LaTeX$ is. You can probably work entirely in TraditionalForm, but that's probably not for everyone... You might want to try getting rid of Courier though. That's one ugly font.
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The Toad♦May 28 '12 at 22:29

@Jens One must necessarily write the fraction out with Ctrl / (unless you copy the cell expression) pasting this into mma converts it to $a/b$ when you actually want $\displaystyle\frac{a}{b}$ (there was an old question by Sjoerd on SO about something related to this)
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The Toad♦May 28 '12 at 22:32

@R.M Yeah, I just realized that Courier is the default font (at least on Mac.) Changing it to a font with serifs helped, but had the kind of issues you suggest it might.
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SteveMay 28 '12 at 22:33

The reason this doesn't look exactly like what you want is that it wasn't wrapped in HoldForm. For more discussion of how to conveniently enter math expressions especially in the context of graphics labeling, see this answer.

Here is a better way to enter things, but I better show just the image:

Edit 2

In the other answer I linked above, I mentioned another way to input formulas that actually belongs into the context of this more general question as well. Therefore, I've made a screen capture to illustrate the steps for getting what I think is the closest to a typesetting interface with Mathematica.

The screen movie has to be short because it's a GIF animation:

I'm starting with the expression typeset in an input cell.

In the next cell I add TraditionalForm content with a dummy string

The content of the string (aaainside the quotation marks) is converted to TraditionalForm via the menu

The original expression is pasted into the invisible FormBox that was now created around the aaa

The resulting string can be edited further (e.g., I replace the == by =, but you can do arbitrary edits here)

With an optional Magnify appended, I evaluate the cell and get the desired result

Thanks! Through some experimentation it looks like Mathematica will automatically reformat using Times and with proper italics/non-italics if I do this. That definitely helps.
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SteveMay 28 '12 at 22:44

@Steve The combination of HoldForm and TraditionalForm works reasonably well for typesetting. HoldForm helps keep things like integrals from being auto-evaluated, and prevents at least some of the rearrangements of the summation signs above...
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JensMay 28 '12 at 22:53

Nice work. How did you make the GIF animation?
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Mr.Wizard♦May 29 '12 at 0:54

7

@Mr.Wizard Exported from a Quicktime screen capture to MOV, then used ffmpeg to create frames, selected every 75-th frame, resized them with convert and then used MMA to make the GIF with variable "DisplayDurations" to create pauses at the right moments...
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JensMay 29 '12 at 1:02

1

@cartonn Maybe - but the screenshot part is an external process, so it may be a bit off-topic. Anyway, this other question could be worth mentioning in this context too.
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JensDec 6 '12 at 2:07

I use a stylesheet with a cell style to display formulas. Then it's just a matter of copying and pasting if you want a formula for display, and you have it in a input cell. Otherwise, enter it in the cell.

Some nice options to put on it are DefaultFormatType->TraditionalForm (so your new cells automatically inherit TraditionalForm styles), a bigger FontSize, perhaps FontFamily->"Times", among others

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